Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Care, with reference to Let Us Learn Too and the Disabled Children’s Partnership’s SEND Money Survey, published on 7 February 2022, what steps he is taking to help disabled children and families access therapies where they cannot afford them and do not receive adequate support from community services.

The National Health Service’s ‘2022/23 priorities and operational planning guidance’, published in December 2021, includes a requirement for systems to develop and agree a plan to reduce community service waiting lists. This aims to prioritise patients on waiting lists and consider transforming service pathways to improve effectiveness and productivity. On 11 January 2022, NHS England and NHS Improvement published ‘Community services prioritisation framework’ which sets an expectation that community health services which have been delayed or paused as a result of COVID-19, should resume from 1 March 2022, benefiting all patients.